Oh boy. An hour long? you really spoiled us with this one, didn't ya'? thanks for your hard work - I enjoy your unique, long, and entertaining content. Don't stop the way you work. Have a great day/week!
This gave me an idea for a GB TCG challenge - only use moves that deal 10 damage. The trick would be figuring out which secondary effects are the most useful!
I kinda went through this idea at one point, but there are so many options. I also had the idea to only use Pokémon under level 10 on the cards. Kinda similar.
Lass used to be an important competitive card, simply because it was basically the only opponent hand disruption in the game. Impostor oak would usually help your opponent in most situations, so if you wanted to hurt your opponents hand, Lass was your only real option.
Chansey is actually one of, if not, the best stall card in the game (for the time anyways). 120 HP on a basic, and an attack that has a chance for the opponent to not do any damage. Not only that, but combining it with Alakazam's Damage Swap Pokemon Power can make Chansey last a crazy amount of time. It helps that with how lightning fast the game was at the time with how common draw power was, stalling until your opponent ran out of cards was actually a pretty viable strategy. Speaking of stall decks, there's a pretty goofy meme stall deck called "Mulligan Mewtwo" which just involves 2 Base set Mewtwos, and 58 Psychic energy cards...that's it. From there, just spam Barrier, and your opponent can't do much of anything, unless they knock out the Mewtwo before you're able to get 2 energies onto it. It wasn't a truly viable deck, since Energy Removal and Super Energy Removal are a thing, but it's just really funny, especially if you're able to somehow pull it off.
@@shadowtitanx3962 Which is funny, not only because other cards were buffed due to power creep, but because even if it had it's old 1 retreat cost, it'd still probably not be a viable card in that format.
You can also play Defender on Chansey to reduce to recoil damage done to Chansey by 20 for each Defender attached. Didn't realize until I wrote it out that all 80 damage can be negated by attaching the maximum number of Defenders that you can fit in a deck (4*20)=80 damage reduced.
Would love some videos on the E-Reader sets. Skyridge, Aquapolis and Expedition are amongst my favourite sets ever. Such beautiful cards from amazing Pokémon
@@SamStarbuckerI just paid a whole pack of cards for a car payment. Funny how those things equal out sometimes. Yin and yang. Hot and cold. You're yes and you're no. Anyways namaste.
My dad drove me an hour from our house to a different STATE just so I could get the Overgrowth deck. No store in my hometown had any cards in stock for so long.
@@corralzin4909 Unfortunately that says more about it being a luck based strategy than it being actually good. I will admit it is one of the better gambles you can take in the base set for damage output to energy input ratio.
I appreciate any card that can win the game in one turn. You go first: energy, flip, 30 damage on a Rattata or Magikarp, opponent has no bench. Game over.
Although you said you dont plan on going past Skyridge, I'd love to see you delve into the further generations such as the "ex Era," the "Diamond & Pearl/Platinum Era,"and the "HeartGold SoulSilver Era." The artworks for these slightly later sets (such as HGSS with the stunning multi-card "Legend" cards) along with how much of a reputation some of these cards have held over the years (such as gold stars and such) make them a good topic to talk about and something that IMO should not go unnoticed by retrospective channels like yours. I'll say that this comes from a bit of a bias as I work at a card shop and pretty much the only things we ever buy from people (because it is the only thing people ever bring in to sell to us) are either cards from the Base set - Team Rocket era or modern cards from the past 5 or so most recent sets (These cards also being the main topic on the internet lately). So it'd be very nice and refreshing to hear someone's take on them who has a big bias for the WoTC era cards aswell as it would also be really cool to see you go over the evolution of the mechanics of the Pokemon TCG along with the design of the cards! Please take my suggestion into consideration and thank you for reading!
Best 2 pokemon cards from the base sets in my opinion were Dugtrio and Blastoise. Dugtrio was very easy to bring out and it did a good amount of damage very quickly along with its pre-evolution Diglett. Blastoise was essential in any water deck as its pokemon power rain dance made water decks an easy choice to use.
This is a nostalgia trip down memory lane for me. When I turned 5 (in 2004) my half sister had a HUGE collection of these. To this day, I’m still trying to 1 up her childhood collection 😅
The reason Zapdos is the only legendary bird in the base set is because it was designed (mostly) around pokemon kids would would see the first half of red/blue. Zapdos was usually the first bird people would get because of the difficulty of the seafoam island articuno puzzle and moltres was endgame.
Moltres was definitely the first legendary I encountered. It's right there on Victory Road. I didn't even realize the power plant existed my first game. I did try the Seafoam Islands the first time, but got lost and decided to journey back to Pallet Town and surf south instead (I totally missed fly my first time playing, too).
This sounds like something made up because it “sounds good” but doesn’t have any evidence supporting it. I couldn’t find a quote from the creators saying anything like this
In the game boy version, I built a strangler deck around Poliwrath, Golduck, and Dragonair that could routinely remove energy faster than it could be played. Very fun build around if you aren't playing humans. Blastoise ended up utility as I rarely attacked with it
Dude, this was an absolute treat! I feel like the Base Set doesn't get a full look outside the context of being alongside Jungle and Fossil. As a side thing, I think Clefairy being a foil rare with no Clefable in sight is a leftover artifact of Clefairy potentially having the marketable mascot spot instead of Pikachu. If you think about it, it is a little weird that the series mascot is a pretty basic common card
I’m getting back into Pokémon cards after years of collecting but never playing them. I’m finally starting to play the actual card game instead of just collecting them to throw in a binder and look at them like I did when I was younger. So happy I found this channel.
You under value lass a lot. The early meta had people running lots of draw snd energy removal. Lass was considered strong because you could simply activate as many trainer cards as you desired, getting as much benefit as possible and then use lass, cutting your opponent off from any of their powerful trainer cards
Loving your content man! Thanks for this and all your hard work. Will you be reviewing Fire Red & Leaf Green at some point? Would love to hear your thoughts.
To note: Devolution Spray's two main functions in competitive was to 1. Coming into play pokepower/bodies (if there were any at that time) and 2. to take off an evolution card so you can evolve to a fresh one, even if your pokemon is knocked out during the process. It's to save your 2nd stages ect, in case you couldn't search it out. It's not bad but it's very specific in it's use case.
There were only pokepowers back then. Pokebodies only came some expansions later. Back then, pokepowers were not so common, since only a few cards had them.
Set analysis is a great topic to go into! Your channel recently inspired me to upload some Pokémon TCG GB challenge runs of my own, and doing those have made me think about distribution. Is Machop balanced against Hitmonchan because it evolves? How about being Common vs Rare--should the rarity of the card reflect power or be reflective of the evolutionary stage? I'm still at the start of the video, but you mention the relative balance of types in this set. When you get to Fossil and Jungle, you may notice a deluge of Grass types and an imbalance towards attacks that Poison compared to other status conditions. You mention Water is a common Gen 1 type, but Poison is not far behind, and even some Tangela cards inflict poison.
Childhood rocked with the Base Set and the state of the game seemed amazing when WOTC sets were out. Makes me wanna play the rom with PTCG. I started playing MTG after ending collecting Pokémon in EX Delta Species, few sets before the ugly powercreep.
Y'know, i wish they'd just keep printing the Wizards of the Coast sets. There's literally no downside for anyone involved. Everyone wants them and it'd be printing money for WotC and Nintendo to do packs, theme decks, etc even at the same prices we bought them for back in the day without adjusting for inflation. (Well, everyone except for the losers trying to sell holo Charizards for $150 but nobody cares about those jerks anyways)
I've never played pokemon competitively but speaking from my experience playing mtg I'd say you undervalued pokedex and maintenance heavily. In my world, we would call pokedex scry 5 which would be insane. The closest I can think of is ponder which only does 3 cards and is still banned in almost every format for being too powerful. Maintenance is good because the ability to dump useless cards in your hand and replace them is powerful. It's similar to a card in mtg called faithless looting which just got banned in modern. Imo it's even better though because the cards go back in your deck.
Really fun trip down memory lane. If we are counting trainers I'd say the best card is Bill. Really no reason to ever run less than 4 copies. I'm curious why you'd say each deck should run at least 2 copies and not four?
Bro you don't know about the Gust Flute strategy? You knock out the opponent's 30/40 HP pokemon and then rebench them with flute only to use Gust of Wind to bring them back to active and knock them out with Hitmonchan/Scyther. Because Professor Oak, Item Finder and Pokemon Trader saw heavy amounts of play, setting up easy targets for Poke Flute into Gust of Wind plays was not hard at all.
I forgot the Electrode at 26:33 even existed because it's not included in the GBC game! Maybe the rainbow artwork was too hard to reduce to a palette of four colors for the GBC, but I'm guessing Buzzap was simply too much work for the programmers to want to bother coding in. 🤔
Many forget it existed for that very reason. Too bad, because i would take that one over that crappy GB exclusive version they made. Skipped using voltorb and electrode in GB games because it was just too crappy.
spoiled on nothing, i forever defend my trade of holo dark charizard for holo first edition, og charizard is not the far weaker nail flick dude im talkin bout by witch i mean,, it was a kid trade, and fair at the time
I've been recently getting back into the modern TCG online and I think Blastoise here is a great example of how wildly the power level has changed from back in the day to now. Back then, Blastoise would've been the centerpiece of a water deck, with high health, a powerful ability, and an attack that can deal up to 60 damage. But now? 100 health won't save you from most basic attacks from current centerpiece Pokemon, and the thought of needing 5 total energy to deal 20 extra damage is so laughably bad that you'd lose a match before you could even get Blastoise to attack. The current go-to water deck with Chien-Pao can deal 300 damage by discarding 5 water energy, and they don't even all need to be on Chien-Pao! I know card games can't just tread water forever and it's been over 20 years since Pokemon TCG started, but dang, it's just always wild to see how different things get lmao EDIT: also, always appreciate some of that good Banjo music
Sometimes I think your judgements of cards are based on a sometimes-flawed assumption that you are using the most powerful attack at all times. I bring this up because you kind of dismiss Chansey because "well it deals 80 damage to itself so it can only really attack twice before it gets KO'd". But that's not what Chansey does. You never attack with Chansey. Like, you _might_ attach enough energy to use Scrunch, but generally you just sat Chansey up in the active slot and said "do 120 damage". Then when they get to about 80-100 damage you play Pokemon Center and wipe it all clean; and remember, you attach almost no energy to Chansey so you either lose the two for Scrunch or you lose _nothing_ because it's not attacking. I'll also go to bat for Lass, because in Base Set when Trainers are at their most powerful, a lot of decks are like, a handful of Pokemon, just enough energy to get by, and then a FUCKLOAD of Trainers. So the odds of the situation you bring up of "maybe they have no Trainers in their hand" is extremely rare, and I'll take a whiff every few times for all the times I remove their Oaks, Bills, and Computer Searches. Anyway, none of that matters too much, it's a really fun video. I love the idea of going over the sets from a numbers perspective, like seeing what types hit the most weaknesses and what the average HP are. I also really like going over the starter decks, but man I will admit, those starter decks really put it into my head that the way you build a Pokemon deck is "you pick a type, and then you pick a second type that covers the weakness of that type, and then you split them right down the middle". It was a fun way to build decks but boy oh boy is that not optimal. But you know, we were kids, what are ya gonna do. I really hope you keep doing these for future sets, honestly! And while I know you're mostly doing this for nostalgia purposes, but it would be nice to see you go even further into the future of the card game too.
A lot of people have brought up that I’ve pretty much dismissed cards that are meant for stalling. And while that IS a strategy, I mainly wanted to focus on the card itself and not pair it with deck strategies. Chansey’s HP is absolutely what it has going for it to make it good, but I wanted to judge the card as a whole and Double-Edge is pretty rough whether you’re meant to use it or not. But yes, Chansey’s 120hp really shouldn’t be overlooked
(This comment reflects modern opinions of recreations of the Base Set format, and may not reflect what was actually played at the time.) Doduo is actually the only common Pokemon to see play for any reason other than evolving into something stronger. That reason being that it has no retreat cost, so it's always safe to make it your active Pokemon and then swap to something else later in your turn. The fact that it has a Fighting resistance and 50 HP gave it an edge over other Pokemon with no retreat cost. Farfetch'd does see some play, again because of its resistance to Fighting. Raticate's resistance to Psychic is much less useful, and its weakness to Fighting made sure it never saw any play. Super Fang is pretty cool though, but I suspect it's usually not worth it. Chansey was one of the most played cards in this set, and I believe it continued to see constant play until it rotated out of the format. You'd never use Double-edge though. Instead, it just walked up with its massive HP and Scrunch, or you'd even leave it on your bench for Alakazam to swap damage onto. Dragonair is very cool, but I think that, ironically enough, energy removal was too common for it to be useful competitively. Zapdos probably deserves to be ranked over Magneton, since it sees competitive play in the Buzzapdos deck. As the name implies, it's built around using Zapdos with Electrode's Buzzap power. Alakazam definitely sees competitive play in this set, and I'm pretty sure it kept seeing play until it rotated out. It was never used for attacking, just for keeping your Pokemon alive by moving all of their damage onto high HP Pokemon like Chancey. You are absolutely right about why Blastoise is better than Venusaur, despite being similar. Which is why Blastoise has a deck built around it, but Venusaur didn't see any play. I agree that Water is the best type in this set, which is why Rain Dance is a competitive deck. I'd put Lightning second, since it has Buzzapdos and part of Haymaker. I'd also put fire and grass last, since none of their cards see any play. Psychic and Colorless at least have Alakazam, Chancey, and Doduo seeing some play, even though they were used for support and not for their typing. All of the common trainers are incredibly good and see competitive play, except for Potion, which is just outclassed by other options. I think the best proof of how strong these cards are is that later equivalents of Energy Removal required a coin toss, and the modern equivalent of Gust of Wind still sees play, but is a Supporter card now (and you can only play 1 Supporter each turn). I'd probably order them Energy Removal, then Gust of Wind, then Bill, then Switch, but I could be convinced to move them around a bit. Most of the uncommons see play too, but probably less than the commons, interestingly enough. I agree that Oak is the best, and the next two slots are a tossup between Pluspower and Pokemon Center. Pokemon Flute, Pokedex, and Revive are the only ones that don't see play. (You either misspoke or misread Revive. It can only bring back basic Pokemon, which makes it much worse than if it could bring any Pokemon back.) Once again, most of the rare trainers see plenty of play. Most notably, you are severely underestimating Lass, which I'd argue is one of the strongest cards in the entire set. Remember that the trainers in this set are incredibly powerful, so it wasn't unusual for half of your deck or more to be trainers. And with cards like Bill, Professor Oak, and Computer Search, it's not hard to cycle through large chunks of your deck on your first turn, making it easy to find a Lass. So you could go first, play all of the trainers you wanted to, and then end your turn by playing Lass and cutting your opponent off of all the trainer cards they wanted to use. I believe the only rare trainers that never saw serious play were Clefairy Doll and Devolution Spray. Imposter Professor Oak didn't see play in this set, but would eventually be playable in decks that aimed to stall and deck your opponent out, though I don't think those were super competitive. And finally, I do think it's a bit amusing that you mentioned how these cards are all useless thanks to powercreep. That's definitely true for the Pokemon, but like I mentioned earlier, some of these trainers would be playable, and possibly even broken, if they were printed today.
Interesting points here. The one that made me think was Doduo. I’m just so soured on coin flip attacks that it kinda overshadowed its other pluses. 50hp, no retreat cost and a resistance is all pretty sweet
As far as the cards in the set goes I'd say Chansey is better than Dragonair because it has better Synergy with Alakazam. Honestly that was the only way a lot of these cards are any good was their Synergy with one another. Like Gyarados is good because Blastoise is available for energy acceleration. Charizard as good as long as you pair it up with Venusaur to allow it to have a steady stream of damage. I don't think that applies to Haymaker though. That dick type it has its strengths in requiring very little specialization
18:00 a little clarify, charizard needs to discard 2 energy cards instead of 2 energy which means if only 2 double colourless energy cards are attached to it when fire spin is used all 2 energy cards, i.e. 4 energy, have to be discarded
Thankfully the reprinted Base Charizard from the TCG Classic Collection coming out later this year finally changed that to say "Discard 2 Energy." Wether or not it should be legal for retro events is left for the community to decide I guess hahaha.
Your channel made me start using parasect in every pokemon games. Has access to spore and false swipe. Never bothered checking before! On another note, the japan exclusive 2nd pokemon TCG game is pretty good. Surprised to see there was a fan translation.
lass was a killer, maybe more so after jungle, but you play all your oaks, bills, energy removals, etc. then you lass and the opponent doesn't get to use any of theirs
It’s still pretty situational. You’re playing other trainer cards to get more cards (Oak, Bill) so your chances are higher that you’re getting more trainers, causing you to wait on Lass even more. Also, Oak would cause you to discard your Lass, so you’d have to draw another. It’s good, but for it to really make an impact, everything needs to be right.
Squirtle will always have a place in my heart for somehow paralyzing the opposing Pokemon like 11 times in a row and shutting down their deck that otherwise hardcountered mine. I really did figure out how to perfectly roll a die for just that one battle
I really don’t have much of an interest in that. I’m more about the casual playing/collecting and thinking of stupid GBC challenges than trying to win as fast and as much as possible.
The Base Set, along with RBY and the anime, were the holy trinity of what got me into anime and video games. I can confidently say had I never got this set as a kid, I'd probably never have gotten into what I enjoy today.
Iirc, I think Chancy is actually part of the best deck in the original format, but you not knowing that is entirely reasonable because unlike the main games, the TCG came out with new sets fast enough that the Meta couldn't settle like it did in the games. I did wanna mention it, though, since Chancy is just in general one of the strongest gen 1 pokemon in every version of gen 1, entirely by accident, and I think that's funny.
God I wonder if I can find it still. There's a very funny story about the shadowless cards. Apparently shortly before they were slated to release someone lost the files for the templates they were using and they only had a little bit to go off of because apparently Japan just wasn't getting back with them. So so they took what they had which were cropped versions of the cards which lacked text and they flipped him and rotated them and forgot to add the drop shadow. You look really closely on shadowless card you can tell that the background is repeating from the top. Worth noting that if a card is first edition it will also be shadowless aside from Machamp which I'm sure you'll touch on by the time you get to it. Effectively this makes the shadowless cards 2nd edition
52:30 Never understimate the power of a Turn 1 Lass. Did a retro match a couple of weeks back and getting Lass'd Turn 1 cost me the game since I had to shuffle back Trader and Computer Search hahaha.
I stopped collecting shortly after the Fossil set, but consistently the best card illustrator was Kagemaru Himeno. Mitsuhiro Arita was usually the next best. I always thought the Ken Sugimori cards were a little disappointing, because most of those were just pre-existing official illustrations, not drawn specifically for the card.
Thank you for covering this content! The original Base Set holds a very special place to so many out there. The 90's shounen aesthetic is just so different from the branding that Pokemon has nowadays... Look forward to you covering the other gen 1 expansions.
Maintenance sounds kinda awful ngl. You go -2 on card advantage, and this isn't YuGiOh where some cards need to be in yoyr deck to do something with them... at least during the era of this set. And unlike Computer Search, this is just a draw, not a search.
Scoop Up is the one card I think you were off base with. The fact that you can just play the basic 'mon that you just scooped up again basically means it's a free heal.
Jungle set! *my cult and I chant, as we ready a magikarp to be sacrificed on your behalf* Long story short, the magikarp evolved and my cult and I went blasting off again.
I can’t stress enough just how much this kind of content is my jam. Hope this remains an ongoing series for a while! I’ve really loved your shorter content so longer form videos like these are especially nice.
Im at the Grass/Green section and man, Im kinda surprised that Pinsir is not inthe Base Set, I love it in the Retro GBC game. Also I hate thag it is Called Energy Trans, it feels cutooff I could have sworn it was named Tra sfer Nidoking and Beedrill are awesome❤❤❤
When I was 8 before had a Gameboy Color and Pokemon Red, I had to go watch my sister play a game of tee ball. In order to placate me, my dad took me to a local baseball card store (D'Angelo Sports on Wantagh Avenue) and bought me two packs of Pokemon cards. In the second one was a holographic Charizard. That was the single greatest moment of my young life, and I'm pretty sure it's still up there in my top 5 almost 25 years later. I'm incredibly excited to get myself that Pokemon Legacy set or whatever they're calling it when they finally release it just for the pure and unadulterated nostalgia :D
...random idea to milk the TCG video game: maybe play through the game using one of the TCG decks? I'm sure you wouldn't mind playing through it using the Overgrow deck, yeah?
I simply must ask you to talk about the delta series. It was probablt tye first set i got that wasnt a hand me down, though those cards were still greatly appreciated.
Fire is my favorite type in general and it hurt to see you rank Charizard below Ninetales, but I'll forgive you. I tried to grind for Charizards in PTCG for GBC and its like its not even in the boosters! Sorry Brittany and Kristin for taking all your pokemon cards
3:03 actually now that I think about it, aren't most flying types also normal in the first generation? You also say that instead of the flying, they focused on the normal part, hence why they are colorless
I imagine Alakazam/Chansey would be a disgusting combo with Pokemon Center. Keep your attacker up front, Chansey and Alakazam on the bench, move all damage to Chansey, and heal up to negate a turn or two of damage on your main attacker without the downside of Center.
43:25 I've done some research like this, played the GBC TCG game, found old decklists and remixed my own, it would be neat to battle. I printed out all the original cards up through Gym Challenge, got some real energy cards to use as support and then sleeved them all, you can't tell they are proxys really. Do you have a link cable long enough to reach Missouri? haha
Very cool video, but would've liked it if you'd included average dmg output per turn for each pokemon so that the hard facts section of the video could be more complete
Cannot overstate how perfect this video was. I would love to see set breakdowns of the early sets, it's really really interesting to see the balance breakdown and everything. Masterpiece. Keep it up!
THE PSYCHIC TYPE IS THE BEST TYPE IN THE CARD GAME NOT BECAUSE OF THEIR STATS, BUT BECAUSE THEY HAVE THE 3 BEST POWERS IN GAME. ALAKAZAM'S POWER "DAMAGE SWAP" GENGAR'S POWER "CURSE" AND MR. MIME'S POWER "INVISIBLE WALL"
btw one strategy that i invented is to use alakazam alongside dodrio and mr mime in the same deck, with alakazams poke power you can intentionally swap all your damage counters onto dodrio to get a huge rage off, also its poke power works really well with mr mime which lets you retreat it for free if the matchup is bad/the enemy pokemon resists psychic (thats basically the only time the matchup will be bad) and either way as long as you have alakazam plus mr mime you will only take 20 damage at best each turn and it will survive for a very long time since you can just swap the damage counters arround to your dodrios in the back to power up rage and saving mr mime at the same time. these 3 have amazing synergy.
I'm not sure you've already done this, but doing a double playthrough with only detrimental pokemon that damgae themselves as you play both games. And maybe do the same with yoir worst pokemon. It's been a while, but I do really love the videos!
Do you have a Switch? The gameboy game is free with an online subscription. A netplay invitational would be a lot of fun, though you should watch out for the Zapdos hes stupid
THE FIRE TYPE IS FAR AHEAD OF ALL THE OTHER TYPES BASED ON THEIR STATS. THE FIRE TYPE HAS THE HIGHEST HP IN THE GAME. THE FIRE TYPE WITH THE LOWEST HP IS PONYTA WITH 40 AND THAT IS THE MOST COMMON HP IN THE GAME. SO EVEN THE WORST FIRE IS AVERAGE. BUT PONYTA HAS AN ATTACK THAT DOES 30 DAMAGE FOR 2 ENERGY WITH NO DOWNSIDES. AND IT EVOLVES INTO RAPIDASH WHICH IS THE ONLY EVOLUTION CARD IN THE GAME THAT HAS NO RETREAT. AND THE FIRE IS EVEN BETTER AT OFFENSE. THE FIRE TYPE DEALS THE MOSY DAMAGE IN THE GAME. ARCANINE IS ONE OF 2 POKEMON IN THE GAME THAT HAS AN ATTACK THAT DOES 80 DAMAGE AND IT'S HP IS 100. NOT ONLY DOES CHARIZARD HAVE THE HIGHEST HP IN THE GAME AT 120 BUT IT ALSO HAS THE HIGHEST ATTACK WITH 100. THERE ARE ONLY 2 POKEMON IN THE GAME THAT WILL SURVIVE AN ATTACK FROM THIS POKEMON. ALSO CHARIZARD WORKS PERFECTLY WITH DOUBLE COLORLESS ENERGY BECAUSE IT'S POWER CHANGES ALL IT'S TO FIRE SO 1 DOUBLE COLORLESS ENERGY CAN BE DISCARDED FOR COST.
Ah yes the amazing Dewgong holding on high above the rest of the water uncommons. What a sick evolutionary line in the base set, that 60 HP on Seel is no joke either. I remember getting the Overgrowth deck, my sister got Brushfire as I remember she always had that Ninetales kicking around in our battles. I remember being a big fan of Staryu and Starmie in that structure deck, solid stuff and I liked them from the Gameboy game too especially because of Starmie's Star Freeze sound effects.
Really fun video! When I play the GBC TCG, I enjoy using a variant of Haymaker called Flamemaker. Swaps out Hitmonchan for Fossil Magmar. Much more consistent since there's no Fire resists. Magmar plays the game a _little_ slower than Hitmonchan, but both of its moves have status effects which are nice early in a match to help you get benched Scyther and Electabuzz set up.
Sorry to be that guy, but Onix's Harden doesn't exactly work like that. It doesn't subtract 30 damage. It just nullifies the attack if it's 30 or less. So that means a 40 damage attack will do full damage to it. It's weird but it seems to be worded like that deliberately.
I mean, lightning might feel underrepresented, but aside from Jolteon (since there was no eevee, jolteon wasn't even viable) in the base set every single electic pokemon is on a card, i think even if you count jolteon they have the highest % of representation
Ah.. finally a good pokemon tcg video without ADHD editing and attention seeking content. Also, very fun format and looking forward to dive into your content :)
So the haymaker deck was mostly Electabuzz and Hitmonchan until Scyther came in the jungle set then everyone played all three but the original haymaker deck were just the two pokémon from base set
Devolution spray is a better full heal for basic or stage 1 pokemon, since you can choose stage 2 and discard no cards in order to heal it of major status effects and minor status effects like poliwhirl's amnesia.
Arcanine is the best fire in this set type imo. Take down is great as it can 1hko most basics, and stage 1s, just use defender to reduce the recoil and protect arcanine for the next turn
Oh boy. An hour long? you really spoiled us with this one, didn't ya'? thanks for your hard work - I enjoy your unique, long, and entertaining content. Don't stop the way you work. Have a great day/week!
This gave me an idea for a GB TCG challenge - only use moves that deal 10 damage. The trick would be figuring out which secondary effects are the most useful!
I kinda went through this idea at one point, but there are so many options. I also had the idea to only use Pokémon under level 10 on the cards. Kinda similar.
@@Paraspectre Yo my dude pokemon TCG is on nintendo switch now!!!
Lass used to be an important competitive card, simply because it was basically the only opponent hand disruption in the game. Impostor oak would usually help your opponent in most situations, so if you wanted to hurt your opponents hand, Lass was your only real option.
impostor would later find itself a new role as a milling card with fossil Moltres.
Chansey is actually one of, if not, the best stall card in the game (for the time anyways). 120 HP on a basic, and an attack that has a chance for the opponent to not do any damage. Not only that, but combining it with Alakazam's Damage Swap Pokemon Power can make Chansey last a crazy amount of time. It helps that with how lightning fast the game was at the time with how common draw power was, stalling until your opponent ran out of cards was actually a pretty viable strategy. Speaking of stall decks, there's a pretty goofy meme stall deck called "Mulligan Mewtwo" which just involves 2 Base set Mewtwos, and 58 Psychic energy cards...that's it. From there, just spam Barrier, and your opponent can't do much of anything, unless they knock out the Mewtwo before you're able to get 2 energies onto it. It wasn't a truly viable deck, since Energy Removal and Super Energy Removal are a thing, but it's just really funny, especially if you're able to somehow pull it off.
Also, Chansey has 1 Retreat Cost. In the XY Evolution set, it was nerfed to now have 3 Retreat Cost.
@@shadowtitanx3962 Which is funny, not only because other cards were buffed due to power creep, but because even if it had it's old 1 retreat cost, it'd still probably not be a viable card in that format.
You can also play Defender on Chansey to reduce to recoil damage done to Chansey by 20 for each Defender attached.
Didn't realize until I wrote it out that all 80 damage can be negated by attaching the maximum number of Defenders that you can fit in a deck (4*20)=80 damage reduced.
Base Set Pokemon is so nostalgic for me. I'll never forget pulling Base Set Blastoise and hosing every1 with it thanks to Rain Dance
Would love some videos on the E-Reader sets. Skyridge, Aquapolis and Expedition are amongst my favourite sets ever. Such beautiful cards from amazing Pokémon
I just paid a whole car payment for a booster pack of aquapolis and expedition 🥴
I wanna see then talk about Vs
I stopped collecting the cards decades ago, but the eReader ones are some I would still be interested in getting just for the GBA mini games.
@@SamStarbuckerI just paid a whole pack of cards for a car payment. Funny how those things equal out sometimes. Yin and yang. Hot and cold. You're yes and you're no. Anyways namaste.
Man the Overgrow deck was it for me: the 100HP Base Set Gyarados, the 80HP Beedrill. What a time to be alive that was.
That was my first Pokémon deck, in that moment is when the journey started.
My dad drove me an hour from our house to a different STATE just so I could get the Overgrowth deck. No store in my hometown had any cards in stock for so long.
@@ParaspectreThat's an awesome Dad
Fun fact: Nidoran Male was even in some tournament decks. Many players took the coinflip for this fast brutal damage output.
I can see that. I’m still not a fan haha
They were a fan and they’d rock your world if they landed their coin flip. I heard the main champion that ran nidorun boy was … sugar… or something.
Says more about hindsight on card usefulness then what is actually good.
@@corralzin4909 Unfortunately that says more about it being a luck based strategy than it being actually good. I will admit it is one of the better gambles you can take in the base set for damage output to energy input ratio.
I appreciate any card that can win the game in one turn. You go first: energy, flip, 30 damage on a Rattata or Magikarp, opponent has no bench. Game over.
Nice. I liked hearing your options as someone that actually learned the game as a kid.
They may not all be right, but they are from my experiences 😊
Although you said you dont plan on going past Skyridge, I'd love to see you delve into the further generations such as the "ex Era," the "Diamond & Pearl/Platinum Era,"and the "HeartGold SoulSilver Era." The artworks for these slightly later sets (such as HGSS with the stunning multi-card "Legend" cards) along with how much of a reputation some of these cards have held over the years (such as gold stars and such) make them a good topic to talk about and something that IMO should not go unnoticed by retrospective channels like yours. I'll say that this comes from a bit of a bias as I work at a card shop and pretty much the only things we ever buy from people (because it is the only thing people ever bring in to sell to us) are either cards from the Base set - Team Rocket era or modern cards from the past 5 or so most recent sets (These cards also being the main topic on the internet lately). So it'd be very nice and refreshing to hear someone's take on them who has a big bias for the WoTC era cards aswell as it would also be really cool to see you go over the evolution of the mechanics of the Pokemon TCG along with the design of the cards! Please take my suggestion into consideration and thank you for reading!
Best 2 pokemon cards from the base sets in my opinion were Dugtrio and Blastoise. Dugtrio was very easy to bring out and it did a good amount of damage very quickly along with its pre-evolution Diglett. Blastoise was essential in any water deck as its pokemon power rain dance made water decks an easy choice to use.
This is a nostalgia trip down memory lane for me. When I turned 5 (in 2004) my half sister had a HUGE collection of these. To this day, I’m still trying to 1 up her childhood collection 😅
The reason Zapdos is the only legendary bird in the base set is because it was designed (mostly) around pokemon kids would would see the first half of red/blue. Zapdos was usually the first bird people would get because of the difficulty of the seafoam island articuno puzzle and moltres was endgame.
Is that true? Makes sense if it is. I just figured Zapdos was more popular than the other two
Either that or the developers wanted more pokémon representing the lightning type from the get go, as they were outnumbered by the other types.
Moltres was definitely the first legendary I encountered. It's right there on Victory Road. I didn't even realize the power plant existed my first game. I did try the Seafoam Islands the first time, but got lost and decided to journey back to Pallet Town and surf south instead (I totally missed fly my first time playing, too).
Articuno was first one found
This sounds like something made up because it “sounds good” but doesn’t have any evidence supporting it. I couldn’t find a quote from the creators saying anything like this
I loved your Vending Series. You should do one on the early Japanese Unnumbered Promos from 1996-2001!
Huh, I never noticed Gyradose was weak to grass in the TCG. That.... irks me so much. Why isn't it lightning?
In the game boy version, I built a strangler deck around Poliwrath, Golduck, and Dragonair that could routinely remove energy faster than it could be played. Very fun build around if you aren't playing humans. Blastoise ended up utility as I rarely attacked with it
Dude, this was an absolute treat!
I feel like the Base Set doesn't get a full look outside the context of being alongside Jungle and Fossil.
As a side thing, I think Clefairy being a foil rare with no Clefable in sight is a leftover artifact of Clefairy potentially having the marketable mascot spot instead of Pikachu. If you think about it, it is a little weird that the series mascot is a pretty basic common card
I’m getting back into Pokémon cards after years of collecting but never playing them. I’m finally starting to play the actual card game instead of just collecting them to throw in a binder and look at them like I did when I was younger. So happy I found this channel.
You under value lass a lot. The early meta had people running lots of draw snd energy removal. Lass was considered strong because you could simply activate as many trainer cards as you desired, getting as much benefit as possible and then use lass, cutting your opponent off from any of their powerful trainer cards
Stumbled on your chanel a couple weeks ago and im hooked!
Yas more TCG content!
Blastoise is literally one of the best cards ever, for its release time. So yeah…. It’s pretty clearly the best water type in base set.
Loving your content man! Thanks for this and all your hard work. Will you be reviewing Fire Red & Leaf Green at some point? Would love to hear your thoughts.
When I feel motivated, I’ll return to the Paraspective ☺️ I’ve actually never beaten FR/LG before.
To note: Devolution Spray's two main functions in competitive was to 1. Coming into play pokepower/bodies (if there were any at that time) and 2. to take off an evolution card so you can evolve to a fresh one, even if your pokemon is knocked out during the process. It's to save your 2nd stages ect, in case you couldn't search it out. It's not bad but it's very specific in it's use case.
They fixed the card later on with hyper devolution spray.
Yeah, I’ve never personally encountered a time where I wanted to use it in a deck
There were only pokepowers back then. Pokebodies only came some expansions later. Back then, pokepowers were not so common, since only a few cards had them.
Competitive and stage 2 are opposites
@@drmann15 you say that, but rain dance Blastoise and damage swap Alakazam were in the top tier decks in the beginning.
retro pokemon for life!
Set analysis is a great topic to go into! Your channel recently inspired me to upload some Pokémon TCG GB challenge runs of my own, and doing those have made me think about distribution. Is Machop balanced against Hitmonchan because it evolves? How about being Common vs Rare--should the rarity of the card reflect power or be reflective of the evolutionary stage?
I'm still at the start of the video, but you mention the relative balance of types in this set. When you get to Fossil and Jungle, you may notice a deluge of Grass types and an imbalance towards attacks that Poison compared to other status conditions. You mention Water is a common Gen 1 type, but Poison is not far behind, and even some Tangela cards inflict poison.
Childhood rocked with the Base Set and the state of the game seemed amazing when WOTC sets were out. Makes me wanna play the rom with PTCG. I started playing MTG after ending collecting Pokémon in EX Delta Species, few sets before the ugly powercreep.
I wanted a video to put in the background while I clean and this pops up, noice
Y'know, i wish they'd just keep printing the Wizards of the Coast sets. There's literally no downside for anyone involved. Everyone wants them and it'd be printing money for WotC and Nintendo to do packs, theme decks, etc even at the same prices we bought them for back in the day without adjusting for inflation. (Well, everyone except for the losers trying to sell holo Charizards for $150 but nobody cares about those jerks anyways)
I've never played pokemon competitively but speaking from my experience playing mtg I'd say you undervalued pokedex and maintenance heavily. In my world, we would call pokedex scry 5 which would be insane. The closest I can think of is ponder which only does 3 cards and is still banned in almost every format for being too powerful. Maintenance is good because the ability to dump useless cards in your hand and replace them is powerful. It's similar to a card in mtg called faithless looting which just got banned in modern. Imo it's even better though because the cards go back in your deck.
My guy online and Card Pop work in the Switch Version of Pokémon TCG for GBC.
but when the world need Paraspectre most
he vanished…
Really fun trip down memory lane. If we are counting trainers I'd say the best card is Bill. Really no reason to ever run less than 4 copies. I'm curious why you'd say each deck should run at least 2 copies and not four?
Bro you don't know about the Gust Flute strategy? You knock out the opponent's 30/40 HP pokemon and then rebench them with flute only to use Gust of Wind to bring them back to active and knock them out with Hitmonchan/Scyther. Because Professor Oak, Item Finder and Pokemon Trader saw heavy amounts of play, setting up easy targets for Poke Flute into Gust of Wind plays was not hard at all.
I forgot the Electrode at 26:33 even existed because it's not included in the GBC game! Maybe the rainbow artwork was too hard to reduce to a palette of four colors for the GBC, but I'm guessing Buzzap was simply too much work for the programmers to want to bother coding in. 🤔
Many forget it existed for that very reason.
Too bad, because i would take that one over that crappy GB exclusive version they made. Skipped using voltorb and electrode in GB games because it was just too crappy.
spoiled on nothing, i forever defend my trade of holo dark charizard for holo first edition, og charizard is not the far weaker nail flick dude im talkin bout
by witch i mean,, it was a kid trade, and fair at the time
I have a not at all controversial opinion, but I think it’s commonly shared… Gen 1 Base Set is the superior set.
You cannot convince me that bill should not be a 4 of in every single deck. It’s just too good for consistency boosting
Running late to help my GF move some furniture, but I cannot wait to watch this video later!
chancey does in early ptcg what swords of revealing light did in early YugiTCG
Pokemon tcg for game just dropped for switch online and it has multiplayer
I've been recently getting back into the modern TCG online and I think Blastoise here is a great example of how wildly the power level has changed from back in the day to now. Back then, Blastoise would've been the centerpiece of a water deck, with high health, a powerful ability, and an attack that can deal up to 60 damage.
But now? 100 health won't save you from most basic attacks from current centerpiece Pokemon, and the thought of needing 5 total energy to deal 20 extra damage is so laughably bad that you'd lose a match before you could even get Blastoise to attack. The current go-to water deck with Chien-Pao can deal 300 damage by discarding 5 water energy, and they don't even all need to be on Chien-Pao!
I know card games can't just tread water forever and it's been over 20 years since Pokemon TCG started, but dang, it's just always wild to see how different things get lmao
EDIT: also, always appreciate some of that good Banjo music
It does suck to see a lot of these old cards become obsolete now, but that’s why I focus on them instead of modern cards 😎
Sometimes I think your judgements of cards are based on a sometimes-flawed assumption that you are using the most powerful attack at all times. I bring this up because you kind of dismiss Chansey because "well it deals 80 damage to itself so it can only really attack twice before it gets KO'd". But that's not what Chansey does. You never attack with Chansey. Like, you _might_ attach enough energy to use Scrunch, but generally you just sat Chansey up in the active slot and said "do 120 damage". Then when they get to about 80-100 damage you play Pokemon Center and wipe it all clean; and remember, you attach almost no energy to Chansey so you either lose the two for Scrunch or you lose _nothing_ because it's not attacking.
I'll also go to bat for Lass, because in Base Set when Trainers are at their most powerful, a lot of decks are like, a handful of Pokemon, just enough energy to get by, and then a FUCKLOAD of Trainers. So the odds of the situation you bring up of "maybe they have no Trainers in their hand" is extremely rare, and I'll take a whiff every few times for all the times I remove their Oaks, Bills, and Computer Searches.
Anyway, none of that matters too much, it's a really fun video. I love the idea of going over the sets from a numbers perspective, like seeing what types hit the most weaknesses and what the average HP are. I also really like going over the starter decks, but man I will admit, those starter decks really put it into my head that the way you build a Pokemon deck is "you pick a type, and then you pick a second type that covers the weakness of that type, and then you split them right down the middle". It was a fun way to build decks but boy oh boy is that not optimal. But you know, we were kids, what are ya gonna do. I really hope you keep doing these for future sets, honestly! And while I know you're mostly doing this for nostalgia purposes, but it would be nice to see you go even further into the future of the card game too.
A lot of people have brought up that I’ve pretty much dismissed cards that are meant for stalling. And while that IS a strategy, I mainly wanted to focus on the card itself and not pair it with deck strategies. Chansey’s HP is absolutely what it has going for it to make it good, but I wanted to judge the card as a whole and Double-Edge is pretty rough whether you’re meant to use it or not. But yes, Chansey’s 120hp really shouldn’t be overlooked
great video buddy. super energy removal is op af.
(This comment reflects modern opinions of recreations of the Base Set format, and may not reflect what was actually played at the time.)
Doduo is actually the only common Pokemon to see play for any reason other than evolving into something stronger. That reason being that it has no retreat cost, so it's always safe to make it your active Pokemon and then swap to something else later in your turn. The fact that it has a Fighting resistance and 50 HP gave it an edge over other Pokemon with no retreat cost.
Farfetch'd does see some play, again because of its resistance to Fighting. Raticate's resistance to Psychic is much less useful, and its weakness to Fighting made sure it never saw any play. Super Fang is pretty cool though, but I suspect it's usually not worth it.
Chansey was one of the most played cards in this set, and I believe it continued to see constant play until it rotated out of the format. You'd never use Double-edge though. Instead, it just walked up with its massive HP and Scrunch, or you'd even leave it on your bench for Alakazam to swap damage onto.
Dragonair is very cool, but I think that, ironically enough, energy removal was too common for it to be useful competitively.
Zapdos probably deserves to be ranked over Magneton, since it sees competitive play in the Buzzapdos deck. As the name implies, it's built around using Zapdos with Electrode's Buzzap power.
Alakazam definitely sees competitive play in this set, and I'm pretty sure it kept seeing play until it rotated out. It was never used for attacking, just for keeping your Pokemon alive by moving all of their damage onto high HP Pokemon like Chancey.
You are absolutely right about why Blastoise is better than Venusaur, despite being similar. Which is why Blastoise has a deck built around it, but Venusaur didn't see any play.
I agree that Water is the best type in this set, which is why Rain Dance is a competitive deck. I'd put Lightning second, since it has Buzzapdos and part of Haymaker.
I'd also put fire and grass last, since none of their cards see any play. Psychic and Colorless at least have Alakazam, Chancey, and Doduo seeing some play, even though they were used for support and not for their typing.
All of the common trainers are incredibly good and see competitive play, except for Potion, which is just outclassed by other options. I think the best proof of how strong these cards are is that later equivalents of Energy Removal required a coin toss, and the modern equivalent of Gust of Wind still sees play, but is a Supporter card now (and you can only play 1 Supporter each turn). I'd probably order them Energy Removal, then Gust of Wind, then Bill, then Switch, but I could be convinced to move them around a bit.
Most of the uncommons see play too, but probably less than the commons, interestingly enough. I agree that Oak is the best, and the next two slots are a tossup between Pluspower and Pokemon Center. Pokemon Flute, Pokedex, and Revive are the only ones that don't see play. (You either misspoke or misread Revive. It can only bring back basic Pokemon, which makes it much worse than if it could bring any Pokemon back.)
Once again, most of the rare trainers see plenty of play. Most notably, you are severely underestimating Lass, which I'd argue is one of the strongest cards in the entire set. Remember that the trainers in this set are incredibly powerful, so it wasn't unusual for half of your deck or more to be trainers. And with cards like Bill, Professor Oak, and Computer Search, it's not hard to cycle through large chunks of your deck on your first turn, making it easy to find a Lass. So you could go first, play all of the trainers you wanted to, and then end your turn by playing Lass and cutting your opponent off of all the trainer cards they wanted to use.
I believe the only rare trainers that never saw serious play were Clefairy Doll and Devolution Spray. Imposter Professor Oak didn't see play in this set, but would eventually be playable in decks that aimed to stall and deck your opponent out, though I don't think those were super competitive.
And finally, I do think it's a bit amusing that you mentioned how these cards are all useless thanks to powercreep. That's definitely true for the Pokemon, but like I mentioned earlier, some of these trainers would be playable, and possibly even broken, if they were printed today.
Interesting points here. The one that made me think was Doduo. I’m just so soured on coin flip attacks that it kinda overshadowed its other pluses. 50hp, no retreat cost and a resistance is all pretty sweet
As far as the cards in the set goes I'd say Chansey is better than Dragonair because it has better Synergy with Alakazam. Honestly that was the only way a lot of these cards are any good was their Synergy with one another. Like Gyarados is good because Blastoise is available for energy acceleration. Charizard as good as long as you pair it up with Venusaur to allow it to have a steady stream of damage. I don't think that applies to Haymaker though. That dick type it has its strengths in requiring very little specialization
I did try to look at these cards as individual cards, but yeah, others get much better if used with other cards for sure.
18:00
a little clarify, charizard needs to discard 2 energy cards instead of 2 energy
which means if only 2 double colourless energy cards are attached to it when fire spin is used
all 2 energy cards, i.e. 4 energy, have to be discarded
Thankfully the reprinted Base Charizard from the TCG Classic Collection coming out later this year finally changed that to say "Discard 2 Energy."
Wether or not it should be legal for retro events is left for the community to decide I guess hahaha.
Your channel made me start using parasect in every pokemon games. Has access to spore and false swipe. Never bothered checking before! On another note, the japan exclusive 2nd pokemon TCG game is pretty good. Surprised to see there was a fan translation.
He's done challenge videos for the sequel, too. Browse around. I'm sure you'll come across them.
W UA-camr
lass was a killer, maybe more so after jungle, but you play all your oaks, bills, energy removals, etc. then you lass and the opponent doesn't get to use any of theirs
It’s still pretty situational. You’re playing other trainer cards to get more cards (Oak, Bill) so your chances are higher that you’re getting more trainers, causing you to wait on Lass even more. Also, Oak would cause you to discard your Lass, so you’d have to draw another. It’s good, but for it to really make an impact, everything needs to be right.
Squirtle will always have a place in my heart for somehow paralyzing the opposing Pokemon like 11 times in a row and shutting down their deck that otherwise hardcountered mine. I really did figure out how to perfectly roll a die for just that one battle
4:04 Well.
Poison type in Kanto beats out Water type in Kanto by 1.
33 > 32.
Very true, I just went to Water by default. Plus it’s an actual card type
Wish you'd do more research into actual tournaments using base deck cards
I really don’t have much of an interest in that. I’m more about the casual playing/collecting and thinking of stupid GBC challenges than trying to win as fast and as much as possible.
The Base Set, along with RBY and the anime, were the holy trinity of what got me into anime and video games. I can confidently say had I never got this set as a kid, I'd probably never have gotten into what I enjoy today.
Iirc, I think Chancy is actually part of the best deck in the original format, but you not knowing that is entirely reasonable because unlike the main games, the TCG came out with new sets fast enough that the Meta couldn't settle like it did in the games.
I did wanna mention it, though, since Chancy is just in general one of the strongest gen 1 pokemon in every version of gen 1, entirely by accident, and I think that's funny.
God I wonder if I can find it still. There's a very funny story about the shadowless cards. Apparently shortly before they were slated to release someone lost the files for the templates they were using and they only had a little bit to go off of because apparently Japan just wasn't getting back with them. So so they took what they had which were cropped versions of the cards which lacked text and they flipped him and rotated them and forgot to add the drop shadow. You look really closely on shadowless card you can tell that the background is repeating from the top. Worth noting that if a card is first edition it will also be shadowless aside from Machamp which I'm sure you'll touch on by the time you get to it. Effectively this makes the shadowless cards 2nd edition
Been looking for a video like this ty and please continue this as a series.
Wow, didn't expect to see such a long video ! Thank you so much !
52:30 Never understimate the power of a Turn 1 Lass. Did a retro match a couple of weeks back and getting Lass'd Turn 1 cost me the game since I had to shuffle back Trader and Computer Search hahaha.
I stopped collecting shortly after the Fossil set, but consistently the best card illustrator was Kagemaru Himeno. Mitsuhiro Arita was usually the next best. I always thought the Ken Sugimori cards were a little disappointing, because most of those were just pre-existing official illustrations, not drawn specifically for the card.
Thank you for covering this content! The original Base Set holds a very special place to so many out there. The 90's shounen aesthetic is just so different from the branding that Pokemon has nowadays... Look forward to you covering the other gen 1 expansions.
Maintenance sounds kinda awful ngl. You go -2 on card advantage, and this isn't YuGiOh where some cards need to be in yoyr deck to do something with them... at least during the era of this set. And unlike Computer Search, this is just a draw, not a search.
Tenth comment swag
Scoop Up is the one card I think you were off base with. The fact that you can just play the basic 'mon that you just scooped up again basically means it's a free heal.
Each bill effectively makes your deck 2 cards thinner. The odds of drawing anything when you run 4 bills is effectively 1/52 instead of 1/60.
Jungle set! *my cult and I chant, as we ready a magikarp to be sacrificed on your behalf*
Long story short, the magikarp evolved and my cult and I went blasting off again.
I can’t stress enough just how much this kind of content is my jam. Hope this remains an ongoing series for a while! I’ve really loved your shorter content so longer form videos like these are especially nice.
Im at the Grass/Green section and man, Im kinda surprised that Pinsir is not inthe Base Set, I love it in the Retro GBC game.
Also I hate thag it is Called Energy Trans, it feels cutooff I could have sworn it was named Tra sfer
Nidoking and Beedrill are awesome❤❤❤
When I was 8 before had a Gameboy Color and Pokemon Red, I had to go watch my sister play a game of tee ball. In order to placate me, my dad took me to a local baseball card store (D'Angelo Sports on Wantagh Avenue) and bought me two packs of Pokemon cards. In the second one was a holographic Charizard. That was the single greatest moment of my young life, and I'm pretty sure it's still up there in my top 5 almost 25 years later. I'm incredibly excited to get myself that Pokemon Legacy set or whatever they're calling it when they finally release it just for the pure and unadulterated nostalgia :D
...random idea to milk the TCG video game: maybe play through the game using one of the TCG decks? I'm sure you wouldn't mind playing through it using the Overgrow deck, yeah?
I simply must ask you to talk about the delta series. It was probablt tye first set i got that wasnt a hand me down, though those cards were still greatly appreciated.
Fire is my favorite type in general and it hurt to see you rank Charizard below Ninetales, but I'll forgive you. I tried to grind for Charizards in PTCG for GBC and its like its not even in the boosters! Sorry Brittany and Kristin for taking all your pokemon cards
3:03 actually now that I think about it, aren't most flying types also normal in the first generation? You also say that instead of the flying, they focused on the normal part, hence why they are colorless
I imagine Alakazam/Chansey would be a disgusting combo with Pokemon Center. Keep your attacker up front, Chansey and Alakazam on the bench, move all damage to Chansey, and heal up to negate a turn or two of damage on your main attacker without the downside of Center.
43:25 I've done some research like this, played the GBC TCG game, found old decklists and remixed my own, it would be neat to battle. I printed out all the original cards up through Gym Challenge, got some real energy cards to use as support and then sleeved them all, you can't tell they are proxys really. Do you have a link cable long enough to reach Missouri? haha
Very cool video, but would've liked it if you'd included average dmg output per turn for each pokemon so that the hard facts section of the video could be more complete
I’m loving watching this with the Banjo Kazooie song in the background. Pokemon with that song really takess me back
Cannot overstate how perfect this video was. I would love to see set breakdowns of the early sets, it's really really interesting to see the balance breakdown and everything. Masterpiece. Keep it up!
Why thank you! I’m looking forward to researching the Jungle set
THE PSYCHIC TYPE IS THE BEST TYPE IN THE CARD GAME NOT BECAUSE OF THEIR STATS, BUT BECAUSE THEY HAVE THE 3 BEST POWERS IN GAME. ALAKAZAM'S POWER "DAMAGE SWAP" GENGAR'S POWER "CURSE" AND
MR. MIME'S POWER "INVISIBLE WALL"
btw one strategy that i invented is to use alakazam alongside dodrio and mr mime in the same deck, with alakazams poke power you can intentionally swap all your damage counters onto dodrio to get a huge rage off, also its poke power works really well with mr mime which lets you retreat it for free if the matchup is bad/the enemy pokemon resists psychic (thats basically the only time the matchup will be bad) and either way as long as you have alakazam plus mr mime you will only take 20 damage at best each turn and it will survive for a very long time since you can just swap the damage counters arround to your dodrios in the back to power up rage and saving mr mime at the same time. these 3 have amazing synergy.
Ohhh i love the banjo kazooie click clock wood summer version
On the background! Actually i love all the banjo kazooie soundtrack😭💙
Magnaton selfdestruct with power plus on pokemon with lightning weakness and both full benches equals 460 damage total.
I'm not sure you've already done this, but doing a double playthrough with only detrimental pokemon that damgae themselves as you play both games. And maybe do the same with yoir worst pokemon.
It's been a while, but I do really love the videos!
Do you have a Switch? The gameboy game is free with an online subscription. A netplay invitational would be a lot of fun, though you should watch out for the Zapdos hes stupid
29:59 The AI always skipped their turn against me whenever I use Destiny Bond. Which always made me question what was the point of the card.
THE FIRE TYPE IS FAR AHEAD OF ALL THE OTHER TYPES BASED ON THEIR STATS. THE FIRE TYPE HAS THE HIGHEST HP IN THE GAME. THE FIRE TYPE WITH THE LOWEST HP IS PONYTA WITH 40 AND THAT IS THE MOST COMMON HP IN THE GAME. SO EVEN THE WORST FIRE IS AVERAGE. BUT PONYTA HAS AN ATTACK THAT DOES 30 DAMAGE FOR 2 ENERGY WITH NO DOWNSIDES. AND IT EVOLVES INTO RAPIDASH WHICH IS THE ONLY EVOLUTION CARD IN THE GAME THAT HAS NO RETREAT. AND THE FIRE IS EVEN BETTER AT OFFENSE. THE FIRE TYPE DEALS THE MOSY DAMAGE IN THE GAME. ARCANINE IS ONE OF 2 POKEMON IN THE GAME THAT HAS AN ATTACK THAT DOES 80 DAMAGE AND IT'S HP IS 100. NOT ONLY DOES CHARIZARD HAVE THE HIGHEST HP IN THE GAME AT 120 BUT IT ALSO HAS THE HIGHEST ATTACK WITH 100. THERE ARE ONLY 2 POKEMON IN THE GAME THAT WILL SURVIVE AN ATTACK FROM THIS POKEMON. ALSO CHARIZARD WORKS PERFECTLY WITH DOUBLE COLORLESS ENERGY BECAUSE IT'S POWER CHANGES ALL IT'S TO FIRE SO 1 DOUBLE COLORLESS ENERGY CAN BE DISCARDED FOR COST.
Ah yes the amazing Dewgong holding on high above the rest of the water uncommons. What a sick evolutionary line in the base set, that 60 HP on Seel is no joke either.
I remember getting the Overgrowth deck, my sister got Brushfire as I remember she always had that Ninetales kicking around in our battles. I remember being a big fan of Staryu and Starmie in that structure deck, solid stuff and I liked them from the Gameboy game too especially because of Starmie's Star Freeze sound effects.
I’ll take Overgrowth over Brushfire any day 😎
Really fun video! When I play the GBC TCG, I enjoy using a variant of Haymaker called Flamemaker. Swaps out Hitmonchan for Fossil Magmar. Much more consistent since there's no Fire resists. Magmar plays the game a _little_ slower than Hitmonchan, but both of its moves have status effects which are nice early in a match to help you get benched Scyther and Electabuzz set up.
Ah interesting. Yeah, that’s a pretty big drawback for Hitmonchan. Jab is useless against resisting ones.
Sorry to be that guy, but Onix's Harden doesn't exactly work like that. It doesn't subtract 30 damage. It just nullifies the attack if it's 30 or less. So that means a 40 damage attack will do full damage to it. It's weird but it seems to be worded like that deliberately.
Nice
I would love to see Paraspectre beating Pokémon Stadium 1 e 2 with rentals. Now that would be a challenge.
I mean, lightning might feel underrepresented, but aside from Jolteon (since there was no eevee, jolteon wasn't even viable) in the base set every single electic pokemon is on a card, i think even if you count jolteon they have the highest % of representation
Ah.. finally a good pokemon tcg video without ADHD editing and attention seeking content. Also, very fun format and looking forward to dive into your content :)
1:00 "this is a retro channel, baybe." One of the fastest subscribe and like I've ever reacted.
So the haymaker deck was mostly Electabuzz and Hitmonchan until Scyther came in the jungle set then everyone played all three but the original haymaker deck were just the two pokémon from base set
48:34
fun fact: attach a defender on magnemite, use selfdestruct
boom, it is still standing (or floating...?) on the stage
Chansey decks were a menace back in the day. Never saw dragonair.
Do you actually have these data somewhere on a spreadsheet? would like to see/use it for my own if its possible.
Devolution spray is a better full heal for basic or stage 1 pokemon, since you can choose stage 2 and discard no cards in order to heal it of major status effects and minor status effects like poliwhirl's amnesia.
It’s still maybe good, some of the time. Maybe. ☺️
Arcanine is the best fire in this set type imo. Take down is great as it can 1hko most basics, and stage 1s, just use defender to reduce the recoil and protect arcanine for the next turn
Charizard with a single spike! 😮 I thought these existed only as beta females. Could you say more about it, please?